The Associated Press reports from New York City, September 23, 1997:

Fund-raising by parents to pay the salaries of full-time teachers has been banned by the city's schools chancellor, who called the effort unfair to schools in poor communities.

Chancellor Rudy Crew ordered the moratorium Monday, saying parents' groups should not be allowed to fund teachers' jobs in some schools while class sizes continued to grow at others in the nation's largest school system.

The order was prompted by a frantic effort in the affluent Greenwich Village neighborhood last week. Parents learned that officials planned to transfer Lauren Zangara from Public School 41 to a more crowded school and scatter her 26 fourth-grade students among four other classes....

Parents raised the $46,000 salary in cash and pledges in just four days.

The newspaper quoted unidentified school officials as saying that Crew feared the efforts could blur the line between public and private education and allow affluent parents to create schools far better than those in poorer areas. Privately raised money can still be used to help pay for part-time teachers in art, music, and science and for some school supplies. Crew's order does not prohibit schools or parents from seeking corporate donations or grants to pay for full-time teachers.

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